ESPE Abstracts

Background: Implementation of type 1 diabetes (T1D) in children is constant from 20 years. In combination with insulin treatment, therapeutic patient education (TPE) is essential to improve care and prognostic. The use of video games as educational support appears suitable for learning in children, innovative, and interesting to respond to the increase in TPE needs in T1D and current economic constraints.

Objective and hypotheses: To validate in a proof of concept (POC) the patients’ interest for a serious game dedicated to TPE.

Method: We designed the serious game diabetes virtual education (Dive). In a virtual environment reproducing patients life places (home, school, hospital) it provide patients theoretical (videos, animations and quiz in the game) and practical knowledge (role playing with an avatar to confront virtually to particular life situation). Each successful steps allows children to earn learning points and trophies and to access to the next level. Forums and tchat also allow children to interact with each other. In this POC, patients were given free access to the game and had to give their feedback through an auto questionnaire.

Results: POC was conducted in nine patients during 10 days. Number of connections confirmed patient’s interest for this educative support and functionality of game interface. Majority of children have crossed 80% of stages and 31 280 points and 12 trophies were collected in 4 days. All report having learned about diabetes. Educational sequences were found interesting by children (100%) and tchat seems to be an asset of the game (83%), even if few children have used it.

Conclusion: The POC confirm the interest of this serious game development for therapeutic child education in diabetes and allow to consider improvement in contents of educational sequences and game interface. To confirm these results, pilot study and multicentric controlled randomized study are planed.